Last weekend I was out of town for family vacation and discovered that we had dodgy Internet access upon arrival. I apologize I was not able to begin my weekly “Anticipating Sunday” entry last week!
Instead of responding in prose this week, I decided to propose a number of questions that arose in my consideration of the readings this week:
- Do we have a global worldview of our church? What are the assets of this global church worldview? What are the unique challenges we face as a church of all nations?
- Who are the “foreigners” of today’s church? How should I respond to them?
- Is this urging to welcome “foreigners”—those viewed as different—a challenge to the “Us” and “Them” polarities we so often uphold in our Church? The delineations of “Catholic” and “Non-Catholic” and “Not-my-kind-of-Catholic” that we so often hear about? Are we mistaken to impose these boundaries on faith, just as Christ seemed mistaken in is initial rejection of this woman?
If any of these questions are especially intriguing to you, or if you’d like to share some of your thoughts about the readings this week, please feel free to share. Thank you!
2 Comments
August 17, 2008 at 5:59 am
Is the first question asking ‘what the world thinks about the church’ or ‘what the church thinks about the world’?
August 18, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Thanks for your question, Jacob. I think both of those questions are important, and connected to what I am trying to get at with these first questions, I think. I often fall into the habit of thinking about “my church” as the place I drive or walk to on Sunday, rather than thinking about “the church” as a community that stretches across the entire globe. I wonder if others must remind themselves to think with a “global perspective” in this way, and I wonder if we did think about the church like this more often, if we would work for different things in the church, have different concerns, etc. What do you think?